Also, I forgot to mention this on my post last night; I keep sharing stuff on Facebook for Mai Duong, the Vietnamese woman who is in desperate need of a donor. Asians (and other visible minorities) are so very much under-represented in the stem cell/bone marrow donor registry. If you haven't sent for a swab kit, do it! It takes 5 minutes, doesn't hurt, and can save a life. It doesn't matter where you live; the registry is global! The whole world has access to it. Please do it. Even if you're not Asian. There's no such thing as too many donors. Recently I've been sharing info about a young man of 23 (!) named Marc-André Skelling who also desperately needs a donor. He has Hodgkin's lymphoma and is of Irish and French origin.
Here is Marc-André Skelling's Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/trouvonsundonneur
*It's in french; if anyone reading this doesn't know french and wants me to translate, just ask me and I'll be happy to translate anything you want word for word. :)
I shared Mai's info a few posts ago, but here's her Facebook page again:
https://www.facebook.com/savemaiduong
Also, Mai's website, which explains the process of a bone marrow transplant and many other things. There's a lot of good info here; not just on Mai, but on stem cells, bone marrow, transplants, donors, where you can get swab kits (no matter where you live in the world), etc:
sosmai.com/en/
Please please please take 5 minutes to send for a swab kit and send it back! LIVES can be saved. Please. <3
Wednesday 27 August 2014
Tuesday 26 August 2014
Travelling! :)
Ack, how long has it been since I last posted here?! Over a month. Well, I'm certainly doing better in terms of loneliness; I'm much better adjusted to being on my own now. Plus, I just came back from visiting my husband a few days ago. I stayed with him for a week in small-town Ontario and oh what a nice little vacation it was! So VERY different indeed from life in the big city. It was so wonderful seeing him and it made it that much harder to be alone again after, but I bounced back quicker this time. Plus I'm visiting him again in 3 weeks, this time in Nova Scotia. I've never been there (or anywhere in the Maritimes, for that matter), so to say I'm excited is a bit of an understatement. His contract involves him travelling around, so I'm going to be visiting him about once a month or so in the places he's sticking around in (some cities he's really just passing through). Around Halloween I'm going to go see him in Cleveland, Ohio, so that'll be cool. And in December I'll be seeing him in Palm Beach, Florida. Perfect timing to skip out on some of Montreal's horrid winters! ;) Then he's coming back for about 2 weeks for Christmas and New Year's (yay!), and then I'll be visiting him again at the end of February in Calgary, Alberta.
His contract is set to finish in March but may be extended to April, then he'll be back home.
These are all places I've never been to, so it's very exciting indeed!
As for MY work, I'll just be subbing this year, so that I can pretty much make my own hours and not have to worry about taking time off for travelling.
On the subject of travelling, I just booked a trip to New York City with one of my best friends; we're going to a concert of our favourite Jpop group we've been listening to since we were teenagers, so that's going to be too amazing for words. Plus, it's NEW YORK. (Omg. As I'm writing this, a piano version of "New York, New York" is playing on the episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm I'm watching, I KID YOU NOT! Ha!). Anyway, yeah--we love New York. I have a frickin' tattoo of the skyline of NYC on me, I'm THAT obsessed. I think about New York all the time but I haven't been since 2011 so to say I've been going through some New York withdrawl is putting it pretty mildly!
Speaking of that same wonderful, amazing friend, she was totally there for me at the end of July (right after I wrote that last entry, actually, according to the date) when I had to go to the ER after finding a random huge bruise on my arm that suddenly appeared after a week of feeling unwell. Cold symptoms, mouth sores...it was too scary. She kept me laughing in the ER when I got blood tests done and I really don't know what I'd do without her. Anyway all is well; just a summer cold, random bruise, and mouth sores; bad coincidence they all happen to be AML symptoms. But all was well. I had another blood test 2 weeks later (my regular scheduled one) and the results were fine, so all's good; let's hope it stays that way! Next blood test is in November. I'll have done quite a bit of travelling by then! How exciting. I love to travel. I hope to return to Japan soon. <3 But for now, I'm so grateful I'm able to go to all these places in Canada & the US and see my awesome husband!
His contract is set to finish in March but may be extended to April, then he'll be back home.
These are all places I've never been to, so it's very exciting indeed!
As for MY work, I'll just be subbing this year, so that I can pretty much make my own hours and not have to worry about taking time off for travelling.
On the subject of travelling, I just booked a trip to New York City with one of my best friends; we're going to a concert of our favourite Jpop group we've been listening to since we were teenagers, so that's going to be too amazing for words. Plus, it's NEW YORK. (Omg. As I'm writing this, a piano version of "New York, New York" is playing on the episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm I'm watching, I KID YOU NOT! Ha!). Anyway, yeah--we love New York. I have a frickin' tattoo of the skyline of NYC on me, I'm THAT obsessed. I think about New York all the time but I haven't been since 2011 so to say I've been going through some New York withdrawl is putting it pretty mildly!
Speaking of that same wonderful, amazing friend, she was totally there for me at the end of July (right after I wrote that last entry, actually, according to the date) when I had to go to the ER after finding a random huge bruise on my arm that suddenly appeared after a week of feeling unwell. Cold symptoms, mouth sores...it was too scary. She kept me laughing in the ER when I got blood tests done and I really don't know what I'd do without her. Anyway all is well; just a summer cold, random bruise, and mouth sores; bad coincidence they all happen to be AML symptoms. But all was well. I had another blood test 2 weeks later (my regular scheduled one) and the results were fine, so all's good; let's hope it stays that way! Next blood test is in November. I'll have done quite a bit of travelling by then! How exciting. I love to travel. I hope to return to Japan soon. <3 But for now, I'm so grateful I'm able to go to all these places in Canada & the US and see my awesome husband!
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